May 16, 2016

Said President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, where "Gloves and soap have vanished from some hospitals. Often, cancer medicines are found only on the black market. There is so little electricity that the government works only two days a week to save what energy is left. At the University of the Andes Hospital in the mountain city of Mérida, there was not enough water to wash blood from the operating table. Doctors preparing for surgery cleaned their hands with bottles of seltzer water. 'It is like something from the 19th century,' said Dr. Christian Pino, a surgeon at the hospital."

Venezuela has been feeling the Bern for a while, and now this is the dream of our own little socialists? What a tragedy for the people of Venezuela, and what an outrage for the US education system to allow such profound ignorance to fester in our schools.

It's tragic for the people, of course, a real tragedy in the sense that the misery is caused by people's actions (and isn't necessary). The other view is that this is what people there wanted--it's the system they supported and this is the inevitable outcome of such a system.

You can lie to yourselves and you can steal from your future, but math is math. No one in America will take a lesson from this, of course. Hey, how's Puerto Rico these days?

It always amazes me when people say we should suffer the consequences of our elections so we will learn a lesson. No lessons will be learned. People will insist everything is roses even when surrounded by decay.

The surprise is that the collapse took so long. The oil wealth was a buffer, like loot from conquest of neighbors has always been Communism's buffer. They are at stage 1 now which is a police state that kills innocent people as examples.

Communism is murder in action. It uses deliberate famines in place of bullets whenever possible to make it worse.

Obama worships that degree of power and admires those who can grab it from fools.

Who has caused more abject human misery: Chavez/Maduro or Pinochet? Whose family has amassed more hidden wealth? Will there be any movies made that dramatize the failures in Venezuela such such as have been made about Chile?........There will be no useful lessons learned from the example of Venezuela, but we must be on constant alert to see that Chile doesn't happen here.

"Venezuela has been feeling the Bern for a while, and now this is the dream of our own little socialists?" They've felt the bern so bad they are in a hospital bad with 3rd degree burns over their whole body on life support. In a hospital in Venezuela.

This is what happens when a govt pushes socialism and the money runs out. Sanders fans take note.

They won't. It's all the fault of those reactionaries who do not wholeheartedly join in the revolution.

The son of some good friends of ours is a Bernie organizer here in Virginia. If you push him hard enough, he's for Bernie because Bernie plans to cancel his college debts. The kid makes a good salary working in IT and picks up extra money playing with a band that gets gigs around town, but he resolutely refuses to pay off his student loans.

Every socialist myrmidon (the humanities departments are full of them) will explain Venezuela as an example of fake socialism. It's fake because Chavez was an ignorant and brutal soldier, a typical Latin American caudillo, rather than a true socialist. Then they'll point to Sweden as the example America should follow. Of course they ignore the fact that Sweden's ruling Social Democrats need the lunatic Greens to govern. And they ignore that thanks to the socialist-approved influx of undocumented Muslim migrants Sweden's next government will be a conservative/nationalist coalition.

And yet in the face of this pending catastrophe, the special snowflakes on campus will continue to wail about Pinochet and the CIA. PINOCHET - a guy out of power for decades who killed what, maybe 3,000 people, most of whom utterly deserved it? Ah, but they were socialists and intellectuals, so their lives actually mattered to the folks on the left.

It's all the fault of those reactionaries who do not wholeheartedly join in the revolution.

Why is it that those reactionaries tend to be in the toilet paper business? Is there something inherently bourgeois about papier de toilette? If so the Secret Police would do well to start sniffing fingers.

Look, the promises of socialism are just suggestions. That's how it works. You need to accept that and enjoy what you get or don't get. You certainly have no right to expect anyone to keep their promises. Always vote for the candidate with the biggest lies.

I note that Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba and El Salvador recalled their ambassadors to Brazil in protest against "the coup" against President Dilma ... provoking gales of laughter from the Brazilian public.

As one Brazilian said "Who is Cuba to tell us anything about democracy?"

You never see any of those Hollywood assholes asked to explain their idiotic support of dictators after the foolishness of it is exposed to everyone. It just goes down the memory hole, and they do it all over again later with some new tyrant selling the same shit. Just once I would like some talk show host to ask one of them: "What the hell were you thinking?" and "Didn't you do that stupid shit before too?"

holdfast said...And yet in the face of this pending catastrophe, the special snowflakes on campus will continue to wail about Pinochet and the CIA. PINOCHET - a guy out of power for decades who killed what, maybe 3,000 people, most of whom utterly deserved it?

Maybe this last is a step too far. You'll probably have more success convincing people if you rethink it.

Maduro's healthcare is just fine. Ditto everything down to and including toilet paper. Maybe the Chavez girl got the biggest hunk of what wasn't nailed down but much remains to swell Maduro's offshore accounts before the end.

You know, Venezuela is still selling oil, they have cash flow.Food is cheap. Medical supplies and basic drugs that they are talking about are also cheap. Even a socialist government should be able to keep everyone on corn and beans with that kind of money. Empty shelves like they have says the cash us going somewhere else.

Chavez destroyed the oil industry by nationalizing it and threatening skilled workers. That was about the time Alberta was starting to develop the oil sands that Hillary and Obama hate. They all left for Alberta.

They won't. It's all the fault of those reactionaries who do not wholeheartedly join in the revolution.

It's similar to reading NYT comments on a story about what a dumpster fire Obamacare is.

"It was a gift to the insurance industry" (true)

"Mean old Republicans wanted it to fail" (passing a bill with none of their input or support doesn't give them any reason to help make it succeed)

"We need a single payer solution" (because the same government that screwed the pooch here can be trusted with MORE control).

The issue is never that their ideas suck. It's just that they weren't tried with enough fervor and had some haters. Religions don't demand the lockstep conformity that Progressive policies do.

You never see any of those Hollywood assholes asked to explain their idiotic support of dictators after the foolishness of it is exposed to everyone. It just goes down the memory hole, and they do it all over again later with some new tyrant selling the same shit. Just once I would like some talk show host to ask one of them: "What the hell were you thinking?" and "Didn't you do that stupid shit before too?"

Don't they normally claim that they "had no idea how bad it was" or simply state that "nobody really supported that goon"?

You know, Venezuela is still selling oil, they have cash flow.Food is cheap. Medical supplies and basic drugs that they are talking about are also cheap. Even a socialist government should be able to keep everyone on corn and beans with that kind of money. Empty shelves like they have says the cash us going somewhere else.

It's astonishing how few care about that. Sure, they make less on oil than they used to...but it's not like they have zero revenue.

But it's still selling oil.Production is down, but not gone, and still substantial amounts. 2.5Mbpd isn't nothing.A rational, even marginally well-meaning government would use their cash and resources (like electric generation) to keep their primary industry going, and they have that. But so far it seems that the whole thing is breaking down.I suspect organized capital flight. If so the final breakdown is just around the corner.

"Production is down, but not gone, and still substantial amounts. 2.5Mbpd isn't nothing."

My understanding is that it costs Venezuela about $50 per barrel to lift the oil and get it to a terminal.

If so, they are losing about $5/bbl on every one they sell. Some of that cost is none cash, depreciation and such so it is possible that they have a positive cash flow.

Or they may be selling at an actual cash loss to prevent losing their market in the event prices come back up.

Someone, David B?, mentioned that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. I think they have enormous coal reserves as well. Up in the top 10 countries. (I may be confusing them with someone else.)

Venezuela is given as $23.50, how that breaks down wrt marginal cost vs. fixed, etc. I don't know. Venezuelan oil is low quality and has limited refiners, so it should sell at a discount, but there should still be a substantial net income.

They can keep all 30 million fed for @10B (@300/person) at commodity prices. Thats a lot of corn&beans. And they don't have to because Venezuela has plenty of extremely fertile farmland. This isn't Arabia. Even the Philippines feeds itself with 2/3 of what they have, even leaving out their immense pasture land.

Anybody who reads the NYT for actual news - as apart from propaganda - must be incredibly skilled at reading between the lines. It would be easier to let the Mexican billionaire's paper of record go bankrupt of cash as it has for truth.

Thanks for that link. I'd read it but forgotten, and am glad to be reminded.

I try not to care too much about what celebrities think, but they have a platform. Sometimes they use it for good, more often they use it poorly. Most of all, good on Spacey for being willing to reexamine a position, even fractionally. Seems like fewer and fewer of us are willing to do so.

I recall reading that after the ordeal of the Vietamese boat people had come to the world's attention, Joan Baez spoke out to acknowledge their plight and express sympathy for them. She also asked some of her fellow antiwar protestors to do likewise. Jane Fonda refused.

Here's my take: for all the schadenfreude about Venezuela's extreme situation, I think it's quite likely that Maduro and his party stay in power for the indefinite future, allowing for modest reforms that keep the people fed and get medicine into the country, but without any significant changes. After all, Castro's still in power. So's Mugabe, and that despite their hyperinflation, and further woes from "land reform."

Is Venezuela a different case because they have a (nominally) democratic system of government? Maybe, maybe not.

The New York Times article has a photo of protestors. An old man is holding a sign that asks the Venezuelan Minister of Health (in Spanish): "You say that lemongrass cures Zika. What would you recommend for cancer?"

I saw a post on Facebook recently in which it was proclaimed that the REAL reason the Republicans were voting for Trump was because they were so very, very angry about Obama's "scandal free and wildly successful" presidency. If a person educated at a top 20 university and a top 5 business school (as the poster was) can believe this without pause, I'm sure Maduro is completely justified in believing that Venezuela's health system is one of the best in the world. It appears that no one does delusion quite like the Left.

I'm in favor of reviving McCarthyism. Socialists and Communists are as evil as Nazis and all decent people should treat them as such. They shouldn't be allowed to sweep the floors of our universities, much less teach there.

Just finally read the article.Just want to point out that third world hispitals meant for the lower classes are likely to be pretty horrible as a normal matter. I've been to quite a few that would be competitive in some ways with the stuff in that article. The only question I have is whether things were much better earlier over there. Considering what appears to be many years of no maintenance, I doubt it.

Perhaps Maduro can be taken on a tour of a top-tier hospital in the US like Gorbachev's supermarket visit, while in turn some Hollywood A-listers can be sent to take a tour of Venezuela's rural hospitals and also get some surgery done there.

I wouldn't be too surprised if Maduro believes his own rhetoric, lots of people seem to have great difficulty these days believing their lying eyes.

Please wake up. Cuba only has good healthcare for tourists and the Castro's. See here to get an idea https://panampost.com/belen-marty/2015/10/06/inside-the-cuban-hospitals-that-castro-doesnt-want-tourists-to-see/ & also here https://uk.pinterest.com/Incognitoxxx/cuba-el-infierno/

Not a completely ridiculous idea. Carbonated water kills bacteria. (and so does Coca Cola)

The constantly emerging bubbles literally destroy the bacteria.

You maybe missed the part where they do this because it's the only option left for them. It isn't cutting edge medicine. It's barely a step up from; "Here. Bite on this stick. This is gonna hurt like hell."

I'm in favor of reviving McCarthyism. Socialists and Communists are as evil as Nazis and all decent people should treat them as such. They shouldn't be allowed to sweep the floors of our universities, much less teach there.

I would question how somebody so devoid of a concept of cause and effect should be in a position to teach anybody much of anything.

What's especially sad is that pre-Chavez, Venezuela was on its way to being one of Latin America's success stories--plenty of oil, proximity to the North, and an opportunity to prosper with a diversified economy. Chavez (who many prominent American leftists should be forever shamed for supporting) crushed his opposition with violence and authoritarianism, wasted the boon from high oil prices, and drove out foreign investment. His toady is now dealing with the fallout (and of course implementing the same command-economy mush that got them there in the first place) and that country is a basket case even by Latin American standards.

Between that and Brazil, the region is a mess, and it didn't have to go that way.

"I'm in favor of reviving McCarthyism. Socialists and Communists are as evil as Nazis and all decent people should treat them as such. They shouldn't be allowed to sweep the floors of our universities, much less teach there."

I'm for bringing back anti-communism, but not wild unsupported accusations. McCarthy's recklessness gave the anti-communist movement a bad name at a time when it was important to make "communist" a dirty word equivalent to "Nazi".

Anyone claiming to be a communist in America (or favoring communist values) should be scorned out of polite company, just as if they said "the Nazis were right about the lesser races".